Nashville named America's best city for barbecue

Travel + Leisure readers named Nashville the No. 1 barbecue city. The magazine cited the Tuck Special at Edley’s Bar-B-Que, a brisket sandwich with a poached egg, house made palmetto cheese, pickles and red and white sauce, among the highlights.
(Photo:
Sanford Myers / The Tennessean
)

Travel + Leisure readers named Nashville the No. 1 city in the United States for barbecue.

"Music City won for compiling a greatest-hits collection of barbecue styles — from the whole-hog approach of rural Tennessee, the tomatoey sauces of Memphis, and even the mayo-and-vinegar white sauces typical of Alabama — with Southern-style catfish, fried okra, and banana pudding thrown in," according to the magazine.

It's a ranking some folks in Memphis, who placed second on the barbecue list, have taken issue with.

"They're trying to usurp one of the things that makes Memphis so unusual," said John Vergos in an article in The Commercial Appeal. His father, Charlie Vergos, started the famed Charles Vergos Rendezvous in 1948 in Memphis. "They (Nashville) might as well go ahead and annex us."